Seth Mydans

Thousands of Thai soldiers and volunteers worked on Wednesday to strengthen Bangkok’s flood defenses as water surged to the edges of the city, two days after officials proclaimed that the worst was over.

An early-morning explosion deep in a coal mine in Ukraine on Friday killed 17 miners and left 9 others missing in a nation where poor maintenance and lax safety regulation make mining a perilous profession.

HANOI: Torrential rains and overflowing rivers have brought some of the worst flooding in decades to Vietnam and its neighbors, flooding cities and farmlands in five nations.
At least 130 people were killed, dozens were missing and thousands were driven from their homes in northern Vietnam and hundreds of tourists were evacuated near the hill tribe resort area of Sapa.
Flooding has also hit parts of Thailand, Cambodia and Laos as well as Myanmar, where waters rose in the Irrawaddy Delta, which is still recovering from a cyclone that left 38,000 people dead or missing in May.

BANGKOK: At risk of disease, abuse and forced recruitment into the armed forces, children are the most vulnerable survivors of the cyclone that hit Myanmar, many of them orphaned or lost, fending for themselves.